HERE’S THE WISHING WELL, WISHING WELL…
Most of us spend a lifetime in the pursuit of wellness – at
home, at the workplace, during vacations and even at strenuous family weddings.
In the process, we are not only short of breath, but of answers too. But what
if there were a wishing well that could enlighten us on the secrets of our
well-being?
This is a new series where a Wishing Well plays Agony Aunt,
with a twist. There are a couple of things you need to be ready with before you
listen to some profound gyaan- a sense of humour and a pinch of salt.
Dear Wishing Well,
I've had it. I’m overworked,
underpaid, short-changed, backstabbed and pushed around at the workplace. I've
been slogging my backside off for years and the only thing I have to show for
it is high BP. In fact, the kind of pressure that's bottled up inside me is so
intense that if I had any ‘headweight’, I would have been called a pressure cooker.
I must have been the only one who went into mourning when I figured out that
Dec 21, 2012 wasn't the end of the world – that’s how bad things are. How do I
change things at the workplace?
How do I deal with this stress?
Yours enquiringly,
Bond Ed Leigh Burr
The Wishing
Well responds thus:
Dear Bond Ed,
Stress at work is a lot like the common cold - the only way you
can get rid of it is by passing it on to someone else. But to do that, you need
to look for the ideal candidate. Here are six types of workplace irritants who
are likely to make your life miserable – and appropriate wellness solutions for
each of them.
1. Re-licks:
They're the reason why the boss always looks like he's sat in a puddle – and
thanks to their overactive salivary glands, they’ve been around in your
organization for centuries.
Wellness solution: Switch
off the lifts on health grounds - with them inside. So, while the rest of the
office climbs stairs for exercise, Re-licks will be left climbing the walls.
2. Arty Fact:
The name is actually a malapropism. Once you get that right, the rest would be
self-explanatory.
Wellness solution: Make
sure you serve health food at the workplace – it will give you an opportunity
to yell for the nuts as soon as Arty Facts enter the conference room for a
meeting. And peanuts will do - after all, you settle for it in the beginning of
every month, don't you?
Serving nuts can also be a much-needed stress buster. During
dreary presentations, you could have internal contests about throwing the
peanuts up and catching them in your mouth. And during those long, unending
year-end reviews, you could calm frayed nerves by making pea shooters out of
rolled up sheets of paper and targeting people from other departments. The
benefits of this exercise will be apparent every time the boss demands if you
are going to meet the target – just aim for the back of his head and yell yes.
3. Cabin Baggage:
Also known as senior management, this kind is nothing but baggage to your organization
and works towards its ultimate goal –the corner cabin.
Wellness solution: Sleep
deprivation can be a terrible thing, especially lack of sleep in the workplace–
it can make the Cabin Baggage types very grouchy. Work towards providing the
perfect ambience – dim lighting, hypnotic spiral images, beanbags and soothing
pipe music wafting across the corridors of the office. Remember, the reason
they say that sleep is the best cure for stress is because when the Cabin
Baggage types sleep, you have no stress.
4. Fool's Cape:
They think they are caped crusaders out to save the organization – the sad part
is, they also think that they are too good to be working. (Superheroes don't
work, you see - only their alter egos do.) A closer look at them would tell you
that they should ideally exchange their cape for a cap–a dunce cap, to be
specific.
Wellness solution: Your
caped colleagues are extremely competitive and aggressive, so take advantage of
it. Have blood pressure stations at work, with a giant mercury column on the
wall on which everyone's readings can be marked with a fluorescent neon marker.
Each week, there can be a BP ka Boss contest and the winner gets a mid-week
dinner date – with the boss.
5. Carpetbaggers:
They bag all the accolades, despite having evolved the practice of doing
nothing into a fine art. All they do is wear the carpet threadbare, walking to
and fro, talking into a mobile or carrying papers, and trying to look busy.
Needless to say, both the call and the papers will be blank.
Wellness solution: The
most irritating thing about Carpetbaggers is that they can smell work a mile
away and promptly fall sick, leaving you to handle their work, in addition to
yours. So, if you have a doctor friend, get him to cart along all the freebie
medicines he would have received from medical reps - and conduct frequent
vaccination drives at work. You can not only score brownie points with the
management as the ‘employee healthcare package’ is being taken care of for
free, but also ensure that your colleagues can never apply for sick leave now.
For long, they've been a pain in your rear. Now, it's payback time - with a
long needle and a massive syringe.
6. Carpet Bombers:
The bad news is that they are senior to you. The worse news is that because of
a secret pact with the management, their perks include bombing all your ideas,
however good they are.
Wellness solution: Recommend
Hot Yoga. (Nope, the name has nothing to do with the instructor - Hot Yoga is
yoga done with the office AC switched off.) Carpet Bombers love the exotic,
eccentric things in life, so this is just up their street. And when they are
goaded into doing the supta padangustha nasa sparsasana or the adho mukha mandukasana
with the mercury climbing to 44C, Carpet Bombers would have tied themselves
into such knots that you’ll never ever suffer from loose ends when trying to
tackle stress.
And since there’s a ‘buy-six, get-seven’ offer going on
these days, here’s a wellness technique that you get to take home, absolutely
free:
Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Associates: Sporadic acts of kindness can also
help generate goodwill and create positive energy, thereby bringing a sense of
wellness to the workplace. So, from time to time, when you hear banging from a
cabin or a toilet, unlock the door and let your colleague out.
Now go ahead and implement these wellness programmes in your
organization. Chances are, even if you don’t fix your problems, you can fix the
guys who cause it.
All the best!
(Published in Ashvarttha, The Wellness Magazine, Dec 13 - Jan 14 / Issue 1 / Volume 5)
